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HOW WE GOT HERE
FROM THERE

The Emergence of Modern
Homeland Security

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C H A P T E R

HOMELAND SECURITY

The American Tradition

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo
the fatigues of supporting it.

Thomas Paine

C H A P T E R O V E R V I E W

Many Americans assume the 9/11 attacks represented an entirely
new and unprecedented danger—that in decades past the isolation
provided by two oceans had kept the homeland secure. This
assumption is largely wrong. Tens of thousands of miles of border
and coastline, wealth and resources, vast territory, a diverse popula-
tion, and open civil society have long made the civilian population
of the United States a tempting target. To some degree, every gener-
ation of Americans has experienced the anxiety that they might be
attacked in their own homes. Each has held public debate over the
sufficient means necessary to protect the nation—the right balance of
security; economic growth; cooperation among federal, state, and
local government; and protection of civil liberties. Over time,
American national security policy became increasingly focused on
offensive capabilities while the balance between domestic security
and civil liberties tilted toward the latter. These traditions proved
unable to protect America from the attackers of 9/11 and the mod-
ern terrorist threat.

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C H A P T E R L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

1. Identify principles that have guided domestic security efforts

since colonial times.

2. Explain the traditional level of cooperation between federal,

state, and local agencies for domestic security and national
preparedness.

3. Gauge the general level of economic resources the United

States has dedicated to homeland security during its history
and what factors affected expenditures.

4. Describe the role that the protection of civil liberties has

played in determining the federal role in homeland security.

5. List some factors that limited the nation’s capability to protect

the American homeland immediately prior to 9/11.

T H E E A R L I E S T D A Y S :
S E C U R I N G B O R D E R S A N D C O A S T S

During America’s first century, protecting the homeland remained
mostly a matter of defending towns, borders, and coastline from
external attackers. Conflicts between colonists and Indians played a
principal role in the formulation of an American conception of
national security. Communities were largely responsible for protect-
ing their citizens, usually through local militias.

Nor did the federal

government play a large role in civil preparedness or responding to
disasters. The earliest case of congressionally approved domestic
assistance followed a devastating fire in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, in 1803. To ease the burden, Congress granted an extra
year to pay off bonds owed at the local customhouse. Such measures
were an exception rather than the rule.

In the early years of the Republic, invasion by Great Britain—

which razed Washington, DC, during the War of 1812—and the secu-
rity of the border with Canada were also national preoccupations.
These fears declined by 1823, but a series of midcentury border crises

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

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led to renovation of existing forts and harbor defenses. Still, invest-
ments in defense were modest, accounting for only a small percent-
age of the gross domestic product (GDP). The notion of large
peacetime security budgets was anathema to most Americans. This
tradition was abandoned only in wartime or other moments of
national crisis.

By 1870 trepidation over threats to the northern bor-

der and eastern coastline had mostly disappeared, with the exception
of a short-lived flap during the Spanish-American War that stirred
unfounded fears of a Spanish armada threatening the coast. In the
South, episodic apprehension about foreign incursions culminated
with the punitive expedition into Mexico in 1916–17 and patrols on
the border through 1929.

T H R E A T S F R O M W I T H I N

Through most of the nation’s history threats from within the borders of
the United States were less central to American concepts of homeland
security. Internal threats have been transient and often regional in focus.
The federal government’s role in providing defense against domestic
threats has always been suspect. During the nineteenth century, draw-
ing on longstanding antiarmy ideology and the colonial experience,
Americans generally opposed using federal forces for internal security.

Intervention was considered acceptable only in cases of insurrection,
widespread public disorder, or extreme domestic terrorism. Before the
Civil War, state consent or requests for assistance by state authorities
always accompanied the domestic use of federal force.

The Civil War placed enormous strains on the proposition that the fed-
eral government could ensure domestic security without abrogating
the constitutional rights of its citizens. The Union home front faced not
only major military attack, but raids, draft riots, espionage, and sabo-
tage—in one case Confederate spies tried to burn down New York
City. Federal authorities responded with an unprecedented test of the
limits of their power; they suspended the right of habeas corpus,
which requires the government to provide justification before a judge
in order to hold a prisoner, and prosecuted U.S. civilians (including
conspirators in Lincoln’s assassination) in military tribunals.

Federal Power

versus Civil

Liberties

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PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

I S S U E S :

CIVIL LIBERTIES AND SECURITY—HABEAS CORPUS

DURING THE CIVIL WAR

Among the civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution is
that “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be sus-
pended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public
Safety may require it.” A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial man-
date to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the
court so it can be determined whether or not that person is impris-
oned lawfully. In 1862, President Lincoln suspended habeas cor-
pus. Among the 13,000 people arrested under martial law was a
Maryland Secessionist, John Merryman. Supreme Court Justice
Roger B. Taney, ruled in the case of Ex parte Merryman, that sus-
pension of habeas corpus was unconstitutional. Lincoln ignored
the ruling. After the war, the Supreme Court officially restored
habeas corpus in Ex parte Milligan, ruling that military trials where
the civil courts were capable of functioning were illegal.

Excerpts from Ex Parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866)

On the 10th day of May, 1865, Lambdin P. Milligan pre-
sented a petition to the Circuit Court of the United States for
the District of Indiana to be discharged from an alleged
unlawful imprisonment. The case made by the petition is
this: Milligan is a citizen of the United States; has lived for
twenty years in Indiana, and, at the time of the grievances
complained of, was not, and never had been, in the military
or naval service of the United States. On the 5th day of
October, 1864, while at home, he was arrested by order of
General Alvin P. Hovey, commanding the military district of
Indiana, and has ever since been kept in close confinement.

During the late wicked Rebellion, the temper of the

times did not allow that calmness in deliberation and dis-
cussion so necessary to a correct conclusion of a purely judi-
cial question. Then, considerations of safety were mingled

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An even more significant departure from the traditions of U.S.

security, however, was the use of soldiers as federal marshals during
Reconstruction. After the presidential election of 1876, the president
dispatched troops to polling stations in South Carolina, Louisiana,
and Florida where electoral votes remained in dispute. In a reflection

CHAPTER 1 • HOMELAND SECURITY

with the exercise of power, and feelings and interests pre-
vailed which are happily terminated. Now that the public
safety is assured, this question, as well as all others, can be
discussed and decided without passion or the admixture of
any element not required to form a legal judgment.

No graver question was ever considered by this court,

nor one which more nearly concerns the rights of the whole
people, for it is the birthright of every American citizen when
charged with crime to be tried and punished according to law.

It is essential to the safety of every government that, in a

great crisis like the one we have just passed through, there
should be a power somewhere of suspending the writ of
habeas corpus.

[but] It is difficult to see how the safety for the country

required martial law in Indiana. If any of her citizens were
plotting treason, the power of arrest could secure them
until the government was prepared for their trial, when the
courts were open and ready to try them … Milligan’s trial
and conviction by a military commission was illegal.

Was the Supreme Court’s decision in Ex parte Milligan correct?
What constitutional issues were at stake and how do they
relate to homeland security?

How should society strike a balance between security and
civil liberties?

What were the implications of Ex parte Milligan for providing
domestic security?

Is the precedent of Ex parte Milligan applicable to the chal-
lenges of combating terrorism today?

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of the ongoing national debate between security and government
power, this measure precipitated calls for the passage of the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878 which prohibited federal troops from enforcing
state or federal laws without congressional approval.

American history from the Civil War to the turn of the century also
saw dramatic episodes of labor unrest and domestic terrorism,
including Ku Klux Klan activity in the South and Midwest and the
assassination of President William McKinley. These incidents were
initially treated more as criminal acts than serious national threats.
There was strong resistance to strengthening internal security based
on longstanding traditions of distrust of government power.
Americans looked for cheap, short-term solutions to domestic threats.
Despite Posse Comitatus, military forces were often relied on as an
expedient. Between 1875 and 1918, state militia or federal troops
responded over 1,000 times to labor unrest, viewed by many as insti-
gated by foreign influences.

Fear over the threat of anarchists and communists, called the Red

Scare, grew in 1919 after an attempted bomb attack against the U.S.
attorney general. Congress rushed through $500,000 in funding for a
new antiradical unit in the Department of Justice’s Bureau of
Investigation, led by a young official named J. Edgar Hoover. In early
1920, federal agents conducted raids across the nation, taking thou-
sands of suspected radicals, many of them immigrants, into custody
and prompting an outcry from civil libertarians.

The violence peaked in September 1920, when a bomb pulled by a

horse cart tore through Wall Street in lower Manhattan, ripping apart
pedestrians and pelting occupants of nearby offices with waves of
broken glass that one witness likened to a snowstorm. “What hap-
pened came without warning,” said John Markle, a Pennsylvania
mining executive on a business trip to the financial district, “(t)here
was no time to duck …” As the smoke cleared, victims of the terror-
ist attack could be seen strewn across the pavement like “lifeless
lumps of clay.” The crime was never solved.

The role of federal domestic security forces grew, although some-

times haltingly, throughout this period. Americans expected counties,
cities, and states to fulfill most of their governmental needs. But the
nation lacked the means to deal with interstate crimes, a growing con-

The Emergence

of Federal Roles

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cern in a society that saw new technologies emerge that could move
people, goods, and services across state borders with increasing
speed and frequency. The need for a national bureau of investigation
became particularly apparent during the years of Prohibition, which
saw an unprecedented increase in organized crime.

The government’s role in national preparedness also grew in fits

and starts. Traditionally, federal agencies did not have a prominent
role in responding to disasters, though the Congress did periodically
provide assistance. Over the course of the century, ad hoc legislation
was passed more than 100 times in response to hurricanes, earth-
quakes, floods, and other natural disasters. As the size of the federal
government grew, a myriad of agencies and programs emerged that
offered some assistance to state and local governments in preparing
for, responding to, or mitigating natural disasters, but little thought
was given to how to respond to terrorist acts.

T H E N E W G R E A T P O W E R F A C E S F O R E I G N T H R E A T S

By the dawn of the twentieth century, as the nation grew in power and
stature, it was increasingly eyed as a potential economic and military
competitor by European and Asian powers. Soon foreign threats once
again became the focus of security concerns. For example, Americans
feared, and some of the Kaiser’s military strategists actually proposed,
German amphibious operations against the United States. The
American occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was justified in part
to secure avenues of approach to the United States through the
Caribbean.

Operations such as this and persistent public calls for

improving U.S. defenses against foreign invasion were perennial fea-
tures of national security debates throughout the first half of the 1900s.

W O R L D W A R I : D E F E N S E A G A I N S T S A B O T A G E

As the prospects for the United States being drawn into the World War
I loomed, and the Red Scare peaked, Americans were greatly con-
cerned that foreign provocateurs would fan dissent on the home front.
Concerns over espionage and sabotage were also acute. The Espionage

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Act of 1917 was followed by the Sedition Act of 1918. Created to pre-
vent interference with the recruitment of troops or exposure of national
security information, the Sedition Act made it a federal crime to criti-
cize the government or Constitution. Both acts were repealed in 1921.

To secure the homeland, authorities created an ad hoc security sys-

tem that included Army and Navy Intelligence and the Department
of Justice, as well as quasi-private, volunteer organizations like the
Minnesota Commission for Public Safety. This makeshift network
largely succeeded in thwarting Imperial German intelligence agents,
though it was inefficient and prone to abuse, as some security agen-
cies were used for partisan politics, to dispense vigilante justice, and
as part of the crackdowns involved in the Red Scare. The system was
abandoned after the war, and most of the volunteer organizations
were quickly abolished.

W O R L D W A R I I

The period immediately leading up to World War II proved a water-
shed in the evolution of American concerns over protecting the home-

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

F R O M T H E S O U R C E :

THE SEDITION ACT OF 1918

More than 2,000 prosecutions occurred under the Espionage and
Sedition Acts. The most famous of which was that of American
labor leader and Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs,
who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for an antiwar speech he
made in Canton, Ohio, on June 16, 1918. Among the provisions of
the Sedition Act were restrictions against free speech and use of
the postal service.

Excerpt from the Act

SECTION 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war,
shall willfully make or convey false reports or false state-

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CHAPTER 1 • HOMELAND SECURITY

ments with intent to interfere with the operation or suc-
cess of the military or naval forces of the United States, or
to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully
make or convey false reports, or false statements, … or
incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of
duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or
shall willfully obstruct … the recruiting or enlistment
service of the United States, or … shall willfully utter,
print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous,
or abusive language about the form of government of the
United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or
the military or naval forces of the United States … or shall
willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall
willfully … urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of
production … or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the
doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumer-
ated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor
the cause of any country with which the United States is at
war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United
States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than
$10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years,
or both …

SECTION 4. When the United States is at war, the

Postmaster General may, upon evidence satisfactory to
him that any person or concern is using the mails in viola-
tion of any of the provisions of this Act, instruct the post-
master at any post office at which mail is received
addressed to such person or concern to return to the post-
master at the office at which they were originally mailed
all letters or other matter so addressed, with the words
“Mail to this address undeliverable under Espionage Act”
plainly written or stamped upon the outside thereof, and
all such letters or other matter so returned to such post-
masters shall be by them returned to the senders thereof
under such regulations as the Postmaster General may
prescribe.

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land. Pressure grew to shift efforts to a more offensive-oriented pos-
ture. Army and Navy planners argued over whether the United
States should adopt a “continental” defense, focused on securing the
borders, or a “hemispheric” defense, a more offensive stance, cen-
tered on protecting the homeland from strategic points in the
Atlantic, South America, and the Pacific. Political leaders, however,
issued scant policy guidance and invested few resources. The public
was largely apathetic toward security debates until the war’s eve.

Once war broke out, the federal government moved to protect
America’s home front. Though untested by a major threat, wartime
efforts to protect ports and other key infrastructure were prodigious,
including the fielding of more than 200,000 auxiliary military police
to guard over 16,000 facilities. Millions more citizens signed up for
civilian defense units that provided surveillance and emergency
response capabilities—including programs designed to prepare for a
Nazi chemical attack.

Civilian Defense

The enemy provided relatively few targets for those patriotic volun-
teers. During World War II there were only a handful of ineffectual
attacks on the continental United States. In June 1942, German sub-
marines landed eight trained saboteurs on Long Island, New York,
and near Jacksonville, Florida, as part of a plan called Operation
Pastorius. The German infiltrators had spent years in the United
States—at least two held U.S. citizenship—and they carried enough
cash and sophisticated explosives equipment to destroy key infra-
structure across the nation. On the West Coast, a seaplane launched
from a Japanese submarine dropped an incendiary bomb near
Brookings, Oregon, in September 1942. But the threat of attack in the
homeland turned out to have greater legal than strategic implications.

Major Impacts on Civil Liberties

Turned in by one of their own, the German saboteurs were quickly
captured. The legal process following their capture—all were con-
victed and six were put to death—established the executive branch’s
power to categorize certain individuals as “enemy combatants,”
instead of “prisoners of war,” and try them before military tribunals,

Defending the

Home Front

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even if they held U.S. citizenship. Meanwhile, the War Relocation
Authority was directing the evacuation of over 100,000 persons of
Japanese ancestry, purportedly to preclude acts of sabotage and spy-
ing. Both decisions sparked debate decades later when they were
cited as precedents in debates over the appropriate response to the
9/11 attacks.

For a brief period following World War II, Americans were largely
unconcerned about external threats. Then in 1949 the Soviet Union
tested its first nuclear weapon, followed less than a year later by the
outbreak of the Korean War. These events brought the Cold War home
to Main Street America. As the conflict grew more intense, a high
level of sustained investment in national security marked a departure
from past policies. Between 1948 and 1989, the United States spent an
average of 7.5 percent of its GDP each year on defense, compared to
the 1 or 2 percent spent annually on the military for most of the
nation’s history.

During the early years of the Cold War, fear of communist agitation
and sabotage ran high. Extensive countermeasures included a mas-
sive security and personnel screening program for port facilities.
Though concern over Soviet espionage was evident before World War
II and was an enduring feature of the Cold War, it was only during
the first half of the 1950s that the problem monopolized public atten-
tion as a homeland security issue.

At the outset of the Cold War, the United States experimented with

a defense-in-depth approach, employing everything from coastal
antiaircraft posts and civil defense patrols to atomic diplomacy. The
United States did not begin to build a deterrent force until 1948. As
late as 1957, a highly publicized and controversial presidential blue-
ribbon panel study, popularly known as the Gaither Report, argued
that deterrence was inadequate and called for a massive bomb shelter
building program.

Still, by the middle of the decade offensive meas-

ures had become the preferred means for protecting the nation, to the
point that some argued for launching a preemptive strike against the
Soviet Union. Close-in defensive measures, like air and civil defenses,
withered.

During this period, Americans worried about threats

ranging from radiological attacks by secret agents to the poisoning of

Communist

Infiltration

The Cold War

CHAPTER 1 • HOMELAND SECURITY

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water reservoirs, but the dominant concern was the Soviet nuclear
arsenal. The United States considered and then discarded plans to
build a limited antiballistic missile system as both impractical and too
expensive, a pattern to be repeated in the 1980s.

Overwhelming reliance on deterrence was an unprecedented feature
of Cold War competition. Rather than defending the homeland on
U.S. shores, the United States decided to rely on threats of preemption
or massive nuclear retaliation to a Soviet attack. This approach
squelched demand for increased civil defense and preparedness, both
for natural and human-caused disasters. It was not until 1979, in
response to the complaints of state and local governments over the
plethora of federal agencies that had to be coordinated with follow-
ing hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes, that the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) was established to coordinate all fed-
eral support to state and local governments. Ironically, as the Cold
War dragged on—and anxiety over attacks on U.S. soil gradually
eased and overall defense spending as a percentage of GDP
declined—the size of the Soviet arsenal actually increased.

T H E T H R E A T O F S H A D O W W A R

In contrast to the dominant place of the Soviet Union in American
threat perceptions, concern over terrorism waxed and waned over the
twentieth century, even as a range of groups carried out attacks
against the United States.

September 11 was far from the first time terrorists set their sights on
Washington, DC. Puerto Rican extremists shot up the Capitol and
tried to kill President Truman in separate incidents during the 1950s.
Terrorists seeking the independence of Puerto Rico would launch
many more attacks in the following decades. Right-wing radical
Klansmen bombed a Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963, murder-
ing four teenagers. Klan beatings, whippings, and floggings contin-
ued through much of the 1960s. At the same time, the seeds of
domestic ideological terrorism were being sown in the movement
against the Vietnam War, which spawned left-wing terrorist groups,

Domestic

Terrorists

Focus on

Offensive

Measures

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

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including one that bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1971. By 1975 the num-
ber of terrorist groups active in America was so large that when a
bomb exploded in New York’s LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 people,
the police faced a dizzying array of suspects. Although left-wing
extremists, Puerto Rican liberationists, the Jewish Defense League,
the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and Croatian nation-
alists came under suspicion—among others—the crime was never
solved.

The FBI, CIA, and other government agencies employed aggres-

sive intelligence gathering and covert tactics to crack down on terror-
ist groups. But in the 1970s, the American public learned many of
these same strategies had been used against lawful dissidents and
civil rights groups. Such abuses prompted congressional hearings
and led to dramatic restrictions on domestic intelligence operations,
including the creation of a bureaucratic “wall” between intelligence
gathering and law enforcement.

Decades later, the wall would ham-

per investigations of al-Qaida terrorists preparing to attack the
United States. Still, by the 1980s, most nationalist and left-wing ideo-
logical terrorist groups in the United States had collapsed.

The rise of spectacular Palestinian and European terrorism during the
1960s and ‘70s, often sponsored by the Soviet bloc, failed to prompt
substantial U.S. action. But the mid-1980s saw increasing concerns
about the terrorist threat to the United States. These included fears
that small nuclear devices might be used to strike the 1984 Olympiad
in Los Angeles.

The Soviet role in terrorism was hotly debated,

although the actual threat to the United States may have been far
greater than was commonly assumed.

Still, the focus remained on threats to Americans abroad. Amid

attacks on U.S. airliners, embassies, and military bases during the
1980s—and a Libyan attempt to pay a Chicago street gang to conduct
terrorist attacks in America—the United States moved against so-
called state-sponsored terrorist groups backed by nations such as
Iran, Syria and Libya.

By 1986, the United States had launched military strikes against

Libya and placed sanctions on it, Iran, and Syria. “History is likely to
record that 1986 was the year when the world, at long last, came to
grips with the plague of terrorism,” commented President Ronald

International

Terrorism

CHAPTER 1 • HOMELAND SECURITY

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Reagan in May 1986. In reality, the policies had not ended terrorism
supported by state sponsors. In April 1988, Japanese citizen Yu
Kikumura was arrested at a New Jersey rest stop. In his car police
found three powerful antipersonnel bombs built into fire extinguish-
ers. According to prosecutors, Kikumura was working for Libya on a
mission to strike New York City. The Libyan campaign peaked on
December 21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 183 exploded over
Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 passengers and people on the ground.
Iran too continued its backing of terrorist groups such as Hizballah.

Still, by the later 1980s, U.S. policy makers perceived the terrorism

threat as reduced and primarily of risk to Americans abroad; the
White House was far more focused on the breakup of the Soviet
Union. Ironically, as will be seen later, the decline of the Soviets—one
of the very factors that weakened traditional state-sponsored terrorist
groups and reduced American attention to the issue—inspired
Usama bin Ladin and helped pave the road to 9/11.

T H E E M E R G I N G T H R E A T T O A M E R I C A ’ S H O M E L A N D

After the Cold War, the nation’s approach to combating threats to the
homeland assumed a more traditional pattern. Defense spending was
reduced to under 3 percent of GDP.

But a new threat was growing—

Islamic extremists with ideological and often direct links to bin Ladin
and al-Qaida. Following attacks on U.S. forces in Yemen and Somalia,
foreign terrorists struck the American homeland on February 26,
1993, setting off a bomb in the underground parking lot at New York
City’s World Trade Center. The plotters failed in their plan to bring
the twin towers crashing down, but did kill 6 and wounded more
than 1,000. Just months later in June, authorities picked up eight
extremists in the Day of Terror plot to blow up landmarks in New
York City. But at the time, law enforcement officials failed to grasp the
full significance of these events.

Funding for some activities related to homeland security did rise in

the mid-1990s, spurred by the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and the sarin gas
attack on the Tokyo subway by members of the Japanese Aum
Shinrikyo cult, who also hated the United States and had considered

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

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gasing the Pentagon and White House. Federal expenditures for
domestic preparedness against weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
from 1995 to 2000 accelerated from almost nothing to $1.5 billion.

Presidential Decision Directive 39, released on June 21, 1995, called
for giving “the highest priority to developing effective capabilities to
detect, prevent, defeat and manage the consequences of nuclear, bio-
logical or chemical (NBC) materials or weapons use by terrorists.”

In 1996 Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici Domestic
Preparedness Initiative, which enhanced the capabilities of first
responders to deal with WMD. Reflecting a growing concern over ter-
rorism and WMD, Congress held over 80 hearings on related issues
between 1998 and 2000.

During this period, al-Qaida and its supporters continued their

attacks abroad, hitting U.S. military facilities and embassies. In 1998,
bin Ladin pledged to escalate his campaign to drive America from the
Middle East. While the Clinton administration ultimately launched
diplomatic initiatives, financial crackdowns, prosecutions, covert
operations, and even a missile attack against bin Ladin and his fol-
lowers, U.S. policy responses never reflected the enormity of the
threat. Built to combat state-sponsored terrorist groups, U.S. govern-
ment strategies in both the Clinton and early Bush administrations
were marked by a focus on the threat abroad rather than at home,
treatment of terrorism as primarily a law enforcement issue, toleration
of terrorist sanctuaries, competing priorities and limited resources,
poor information sharing and analysis, and inadequate domestic pre-
paredness. Military responses were rare and limited, reflecting narrow
congressional and public support for aggressive and sustained inter-
national action. Because of this, a highly refined form of political vio-
lence received room to metastasize largely unchecked.

In December 1999, Ahmed Ressam was arrested at the U.S.-

Canadian border with the materials for a bomb he intended to use
against Los Angeles Airport as part of the al-Qaida-linked global mil-
lennium terrorist plot. Despite this near miss, there was still little
appetite for a broad national agenda to address homeland security.

In 2000 and 2001, despite a variety of leads and warnings, America’s
homeland security system failed to detect plans for a massive strike
against the homeland. While the blame for the attack rests squarely

A Broken

System

CHAPTER 1 • HOMELAND SECURITY

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with the criminals who conducted it, and their plot was well crafted
and executed, evidence suggests a more effective system could have
uncovered and disrupted it. The failure to do so stemmed from a vari-
ety of systemic problems, including disjointed government strategies,
balkanized agency responsibilities, an FBI mindset focused on investi-
gating rather than preventing terrorism, grossly inadequate resources,
poor technology, a refusal to share information, and just plain sloppy
work. Civil liberty safeguards put in place decades before had become
ossified bureaucratic barriers. When a New York FBI agent asked for
help from criminal agents to track down two al-Qaida operatives (who
later participated in the 9/11 attacks), he was turned down because of
the “wall” between intelligence and criminal cases.

On the morning of September 11, 19 suicide hijackers approached

their flights. The existing homeland security system still had a chance
to stop them. In 1996 and ’97, the White House Commission on
Aviation Safety and Security, headed by Vice President Al Gore and
known as the “Gore Commission,” had sent recommendations for
preventing aviation terrorism to the White House. But years later—
despite repeated government and media investigations documenting
gaps in aviation security—many of the safeguards recommended by
the Gore Commission and other experts were still not in place. On
this morning, nine of the hijackers were selected for special security
screening, according to a federal spokesperson, but all made it
through to their flights anyway.

C H A P T E R S U M M A R Y

The distinguishing feature of homeland security initiatives that were
undertaken before September 11 was that investments in homeland
security were far outpaced by identified requirements and that even
those identified requirements underestimated the threat. Those
investments that were made closely adhered to traditional organiza-
tional responsibilities and missions with only a modicum of innova-
tion, interagency integration, or synchronization of federal, state,
local, and private-sector efforts. In many respects, these modest, frag-
mented efforts followed the traditional American approach of dedi-
cating only limited resources to domestic security.

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

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In short, despite repeated attacks by al-Qaida against Americans

abroad, threats by bin Ladin against the homeland, at least two major
attempts by his followers to attack U.S. targets, a successful poison
gas attack in Japan by a group with an established hatred of the
United States, the Oklahoma bombing, and numerous warnings at all
levels of government, the United States failed to understand and
respond to the threat of a massive terrorist attack against its territory.

C H A P T E R Q U I Z

Why did a significant federal role for domestic security, except
during periods of war, not emerge until the twentieth century?

Identify two historical conflicts in which the U.S. government
used military tribunals to try civilians arrested in the United
States and why these powers were employed.

Explain the relationship between civil liberties and domestic
security in the American tradition.

What was the traditional level of national spending on domestic
security? What were the exceptions? Why?

List factors that may have helped prevent the U.S. government
from detecting the 9/11 plot.

N O T E S

1. See, for example, Jill Lepore, Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of

American Identity (New York: Random House, 1999).

2. Mark Grimsely, “Surviving Military Revolution: The U.S. Civil War,” McGregor Knox and

Williamson Murray, eds., The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001).

3. Andrew J. Birtle, U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine,

1860-1941 (Washington DC: Center of Military History, 1998); Charles P. Stacey, “The Myth
of the Unguarded Frontier, 1815-1871,” American Historical Review 56 (October 1950): 1–18;
John S. D. Eisenhower, Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913-
1917 (New York: Norton, 1993).

4. Lois G. Schwoerer, “No Standing Armies!” The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century

England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).

5. Robert W. Coakley, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1789-1878

(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1988).

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Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 19

6. William H. Rehnquist, All the Laws but One: Civil Liberties in Wartime (New York: Alfred

A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 138–143.

7. Mathew Carlton Hammond, “The Posse Comitatus Act: A Principle in Need of Renewal,”

Washington University Law Quarterly 2/75 (Summer 1997): 3, www.wulaw.wuslt.edu/75-
2/752-10.html.

8. For a detailed discussion of the period, see Clayton D. Laurie and Ronald H. Cole, The Role

of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1877-1945 (Washington, DC: Center of
Military History, 1997).

9. Nathan Miller, Spying for America (New York, Dell Publishing, 1989), pp. 232–34.

10. Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 (New Brunswick: Rutgers

University Press, 1995).

11. Carl H. Chrislock, Watchdog of Loyalty: The Minnesota Commission for Public Safety dur-

ing World War I (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1991).

12. Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and

U.S. Strategy in World War II (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000),
pp. 3–15.

13. For an overview of the defense of the United States during World War II, see Stetson Conn,

Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild, Guarding the United States and Its Outposts
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2000).

14. Defense spending, for example, was 2 percent of GDP in 1940. During the Cold War, spend-

ing varied considerably from a low of 3.6 percent of GDP in 1948 to a high of 13 percent in
1954. Office of Management and Budget, Historical Table, Budget of the United States
Government, Table 3.1: Outlays by Superfunction and Function: 1940-2006,
w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2002/sheets/hist03z1.xls. For the varieties in Cold War
defense spending, see Dennis S. Ippolito, Blunting the Sword: Budget Policy and the Future
of Defense Spending (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1994), pp. 3–33.
The exact percentages of defense spending that can be attributed directly to protecting the
homeland or securing other national security interests is difficult to quantify. Some invest-
ments served dual functions. America’s nuclear arsenal, for example, was intended to pro-
tect the nation and discourage Soviet aggression in Western Europe. Homeland security
spending by nondefense agencies is even more difficult to measure.

15. Lisle Abbott Rose, The Cold War Comes to Main Street: America in 1950 (Lawrence, KS: The

University Press of Kansas, 1999).

16. Paul Dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century (New York: Walker, 2001), p. 161.

17. In 1950 the United States established a civil defense program and the military organized its

first postwar continental air defense commands to protect nearly 100 cities, industrial cen-
ters, and military bases. At its height these defenses included constant combat air patrols by
the Air National Guard and 240 missile sites operated by almost 45,000 active Army National
Guard soldiers. Robert L. Kelly, Army Antiaircraft in Air Defense, 1946-54, Historical Study
No. 4 (Colorado Springs, CO: Air Defense Command, June 1954); Kenneth Schaffel, The
Emerging Shield: The Air Force and the Evolution of Continental Air Defense, 1945-1960
(Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1991). There were brief spurts of activity. After
the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the national civil defense effort received renewed attention
when the government initiated a nationwide, nuclear-fallout shelter system. Some homeland
defense systems lingered as well. As late as the early 1970s, the Defense Department still
maintained nuclear-tipped air defense missiles in the United States. Thomas J. Kerr, Civil
Defense in the US: Bandaid for a Holocaust? (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).

18. United States Senate, Final Report of Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations

with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Book II (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1976).

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 20

19. Department of the Army Historical Summary, Fiscal Year 1984 (Washington, DC: U.S. Army

Center of Military History).

20. The most controversial claims were made in Claire Starling, The Terror Network: The Secret

War of International Terrorism (New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1981). See also
Jillian Becker. The Soviet Connection: State Sponsorship of Terrorism. (London: Alliance for
the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies), 1985. Bob Woodward, Veil: The
Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987) p. 127, concludes
that Sterling’s research drew heavily on CIA disinformation efforts to inflate the threat of
Soviet state-sponsored terrorism. Nevertheless, in the early 1990s Russian officials, includ-
ing deputy minister Sergei Shakhari and information minister Mikhail Poltoranin, sug-
gested that there was credible archival material substantiating the role of terrorism
sponsorship by the Soviet Union and its client states. Many of the relevant archives contin-
ued to be closed to Western researchers. See, for example, Mark Kramer, “Archival Research
in Moscow: Progress and Pitfalls,” Cold War International History Project,
wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=library.document&topic_id=1409&id=516, and Gary
Bruce, “Update on the Stasi Archives,” Cold War International History Project,
wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=library.document&topic_id=1409&id=15618.

21. Steven M. Kosiak, Analysis of the FY 2003 Defense Budget Request (Washington, DC: CSBA,

March 2002), graph 4.

22. Richard A. Falkenrath, “The Problems of Preparedness: Challenges Facing the U.S.

Domestic Preparedness Program,” Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness,
Discussion Paper, John F. Kennedy School of Government (2000), p. 1.

23. Presidential Decision Directive 39, U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism, June 21, 1995.

24. Laura K. Donohue, “In the Name of National Security: U.S. Counterterrorist Measures,

1960-2000,” BCIA Discussion Paper 20001-6, John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University, August 2001.

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C H A P T E R

THE RISE OF MODERN TERRORISM

The Road to 9/11

While terrorism is not new, today’s terrorist threat is different from that
of the past … The new global environment, with its resultant terrorist
interconnectivity, and WMD are changing the nature of terrorism.

The (U.S.) National Strategy for Combating Terrorism

C H A P T E R O V E R V I E W

Unprecedented in its destructiveness, the 9/11 attacks heralded the
arrival of a new type of terrorism. The potential of this menace had been
foreshadowed by several plots during the previous decade, including
the 1993 World Trade Center attack, the millennium bombing scheme
against Los Angeles, and Aum Shinrikyo’s gas attack in Tokyo, as well
as the cult’s intent toward the United States. While these attacks failed
to achieve their full objectives and left American complacency essen-
tially unshaken, they heralded the rise of new terrorist strategies with
global reach bent on not just influencing political events, but also inflict-
ing death and destruction on a grand scale. This chapter describes how
international terrorism evolved and the nature of the threat faced by the
United States in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

After the 9/11 strikes, analysts recognized several characteristics of

this new threat—characteristics that differed dramatically from the
state-sponsored terrorism that had concerned the United States dur-
ing the waning years of the Cold War. America now had to plan for
adversaries that could build well-funded, sophisticated, transna-
tional organizations free from the strictures of a state sponsorship;

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able to exploit conditions created by globalization and related politi-
cal, social, cultural, and economic dislocation; and savvy in the
twenty-first century technologies that allow terrorists to span the
globe and threaten mass destruction.

Along with the devastation wreaked on life and property wrought

by the September 11 attacks, came a new realization of the serious
threat posed by the specter of twenty-first century terrorism.

C H A P T E R L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

1. Identify the key characteristics of the twenty-first century

terrorist organization as represented by al-Qaida.

2. List major elements of modern technology and commerce used

by twenty-first century terrorists.

3. Describe the human and financial costs of the 9/11 attacks.

4. Discuss the implications of weapons of mass destruction

(WMD) and mass casualties in twenty-first century terrorism.

T W E N T Y - F I R S T C E N T U R Y T E R R O R I S M

Postwar Japan was one of America’s greatest success stories. A suc-
cessful occupation after World War II led to the rise of a wealthy,
democratic nation and a staunch ally for the United States. Few in
the United States paid attention to an obscure Japanese religious cult
led by a charismatic 40-year-old mystic named Ashara Shoko, even
though he preached hatred of America and the coming end of the
world. That changed on March 20, 1995, when members of Shoko’s
Aum Shinrikyo cult released enough sarin gas into the Tokyo sub-
way system to kill 12 commuters and sicken 5,000. The cult failed to
murder large numbers only because of the poor quality of the chem-
ical agent employed and mistakes in its dispersal. In the wake of the
attack, a crackdown by the authorities led to the arrest and convic-
tion of Ashara and other members of the cult’s leadership, as well as

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

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the breakup of their extensive financial network and weapons labo-
ratories. The official investigation also revealed details of their activ-
ities, including discussion of chemical attacks in the United States,
shattering many of the existing preconceptions concerning the
nature of modern terrorism. Aum Shinrikyo was not sponsored by a
state. The terrorists did not come from the tents of a third-world
refugee camp, but from fine, middle-class homes. They did not have
specific political aims, but a broad, global vision for the future. They
understood how modern technology could serve as the means for
achieving their goals. Their ways were not targeted acts of violence,
but bold attempts at mass death. They were the harbingers of
twenty-first century terrorism.

G L O B A L G O A L S

Among earlier generations of terrorists, many groups pursued
national goals by launching tactical operations to achieve specific
objectives. For example, Palestinian terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s
demanded the elimination of Israel and used hostage exchanges to
gain tactical advantages. Communist organizations such as the
Baader-Meinhof gang, while espousing an international ideology,
limited most of their actions geographically. They were focused on
“liberating” their individual nations from capitalism and assisting
their Palestinian allies in the fight against Israel.

In contrast, the al-Qaida organization that evolved over the

course of half a decade before 9/11 reflected many of the charac-
teristics of the contemporary global terrorist threat. Al-Qaida por-
trayed itself as the leader in a worldwide battle, promising to attack
“infidel” governments wherever they opposed the development of
Islamic theocracies. As will be seen later, the group dedicated itself
to establishing a global pan-Islamic caliphate, or Muslim theocracy.
Its goals included expelling U.S. influence and friendly govern-
ments from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Arab states, along with
destroying the state of Israel. As part of this strategy, al-Qaida
sought to crush the will and capability of America and its Western
allies to resist the emergence of extremist governments. Al-Qaida
did not claim to represent one breakaway province, country, region,

CHAPTER 2 • THE RISE OF MODERN TERRORISM

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or even economic class. Instead, the group aimed its appeal at the
world’s more than 1 billion Muslims. While composed primarily of
Sunni Muslims, al-Qaida also sought to transcend traditional reli-
gious rivalries by gaining the support of Shiite extremists from
groups such as Hizballah.

While earlier groups appealed to such broad motivating forces as

communism, racism, and pan-Arabism, no traditional terrorist
group succeeded in creating the unifying call to arms demonstrated
by al-Qaida.

A S O P H I S T I C A T E D , W O R L D W I D E O R G A N I Z A T I O N

Unlike many other groups whose international rhetoric far exceeded
their actual membership, al-Qaida proved able to motivate a diverse
constituency and mold them into an organizationally and technolog-
ically advanced force.

As part of its broad strategy, al-Qaida formed relationships with a
variety of groups, including Egypt’s Islamic Group and al-Jihad;
Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group; Pakistan’s Harakat ul-Mujahidin;
the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; Philippine’s Abu Sayyaf; and
other groups in nations such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and
Bangladesh. In effect, al-Qaida served as an umbrella group or
“organization of organizations” with affiliated operations in more
than 60 countries.

The 9/11 hijackers themselves came from Saudi Arabia, the

United Arab Emirates (UAE), Lebanon, and Egypt. Plotters con-
nected to the operation included French, German, Kuwaiti, and
Yemeni citizens. Other al-Qaida operations have been linked to citi-
zens or groups from the United States, the Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea,
Kenya, Pakistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, the
Philippines, Tajikistan, Turkey, Chechnya, Bangladesh, Kashmir,
Azerbaijan, and Indonesia, among others. At one point, the U.S.
prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, held prisoners linked to al-Qaida
from 38 countries.

The movement succeeded in uniting individuals

from vastly different backgrounds, including citizens of states hos-
tile to one another.

International

Membership

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

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Some of the most infamous modern terrorist groups, such as the
Baader Meinhoff gang and Italian Red Brigades, numbered their
hard-core operatives in the dozens and supporters in the hundreds.
By some estimates, even the Irish Republican Army fielded fewer
than 500 gunmen at its peak. Al-Qaida trained up to 20,000 personnel
in its Afghan camps between 1996 and 2001.

Its hard-core operatives

most likely numbered in the hundreds on 9/11, with thousands of
trained supporters spread across the globe.

Al-Qaida decision-making structures were highly developed, as was
the organization’s tactical execution. The group’s decentralized,
“flat” administration gave it the capability of planning and executing
complex operations despite resistance and setbacks. This sort of net-
worked organization, composed largely of autonomous cells, made
the organization resistant to “decapitation” by targeted strikes on its
leadership. Al-Qaida leadership could prompt terrorist violence
through several types of organizational systems, including centrally
controlled operations such as 9/11; al-Qaida supported and/or
financed operations carried out by affiliate groups; and “sponta-
neous” action by small groups or individuals inspired by the cause
and often trained at al-Qaida facilities. The last two strategies dra-
matically increased the number and type of potential attackers, pos-
ing special difficulties for counterterrorism officials.

Much as modern multinational corporations dispersed decision mak-
ing through the use of technology, al-Qaida exploited emerging
trends and tools. The end of the Cold War dramatically increased the
ease of international communication, commerce, and travel. As the
twenty-first century began, more than 140 million people lived out-
side their country of origins; millions of people crossed international
borders every day.4 Among them were numerous al-Qaida support-
ers, conversant in the languages and cloaked in the citizenships of the
very societies they hated.

Moving freely through this ever more open and integrated inter-

national structure, al-Qaida operatives maintained communication
via new technologies such as cell and satellite phones, encrypted e-
mail, chat rooms, videotape, and CD-ROMs.

This allowed them to

disperse their leadership, training, and logistics not just across a

Use of Modern

Technology and

Exploitation of

Social Trends

Decentralized

Structure

Large Cadre

CHAPTER 2 • THE RISE OF MODERN TERRORISM

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region, but around the globe. Operating from safety in Afghanistan,
the group’s leaders were able to support operations in dozens of
nations.

Al-Qaida established an international network of businesses, criminal
enterprises, and charities to support its operations. From heroin
smuggling to leather tanning, al-Qaida ventures generated significant
revenue and supported an estimated $30 million annual budget
which was distributed via formal and informal transfer systems.

While al-Qaida prospered during in its Sudanese and Afghan sanctu-
aries, it was not dependent on those states in the same manner as
many terrorist groups during the 1970s and ‘80s. Indeed, the Taliban
government of Afghanistan relied on al-Qaida for capital and military
power, discouraging it from cracking down on the group as
demanded by the United States. It has been said the Taliban govern-
ment was in some ways a “terrorist-sponsored state.”

Al-Qaida and other groups also sought out operational bases in

other countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and
Europe. In some cases, these countries could not stop them because
of weak central governments or war. In others, such as Europe and
even the United States, lax security measures and respect for civil lib-
erties combined to provide the terrorists with operational latitude.

Whether concocted in Sudanese safe houses, Afghan training
camps, or even American apartment buildings, al-Qaida operations
have been marked by careful and expert planning and execution. In
addition, these terrorists not only understood the culture of their
enemies, but were able to employ America’s technology against
itself.

Al-Qaida attacks have involved years of planning. The 1998 bomb-

ings of U.S. embassies in Africa were being plotted as early as 1993.

The 9/11 attacks began taking shape in the mid-1990s. At heart, the
plot reflected a disturbing ingenuity, sharply contrasting with the
standard terrorist tactics of earlier decades. The ability of the group to
envision and plan the details of such an intricate operation, with its
extensive recruiting and operational support requirements, demon-
strated a new level of terrorist capability.

Sophisticated

Planning

Not Reliant on

State Sponsors

Funded through

Sophisticated

and Multiple

Channels

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

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CHAPTER 2 • THE RISE OF MODERN TERRORISM

I S S U E S :

THE LAX BOMBER—THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME?

On a chilly December afternoon shortly before the year 2000 mil-
lennium celebrations, a green Chrysler sedan rolled off the ferry
sailing from Canada’s Vancouver Island to Port Angeles,
Washington, in the United States. When the customs agent
Diana Dean handed the driver a customs declaration form, she
noticed the driver seemed nervous and fidgety.

Text of Interview by Customs Inspector Diana Dean

“Where are you going?”
“Sattal.”
“Why are you going to Seattle?”
“Visit.”
“Where do you live?”
“Montreal.”
“Who are you going to see in Seattle?”
“No, hotel.”

After further questioning, the car was searched; its trunk was

packed with about 40 kilogr

nse was Benni Antoine Noris, but his real name was Ahmed

Ressam a young, middle-class Algerian with a passion for soccer
and experience in Afghan terrorist camps. Ressam confessed to
U.S. authorities that the explosives were for a terrorist operation
against Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), an operation he
had been planning in Canada for several months. He said he
chose LAX “because an airport is sensitive politically and eco-
nomically” and the United States was “the biggest enemy” of
Islam. Ressam said he had conceived the idea himself, and that
while al-Qaida knew about the plot and supplied some support,
it was his operation. Little more than $3,000 Canadian dollars and
a fake driver’s license had been required to prepare his attack.

While an alert customs agent foiled the millennium bomb

plot, all the elements required to replicate this form of attack are
achievable by any individual or terrorist group.

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Strategic Goals

While obscure to many Westerners, al-Qaida’s strategy was based
upon a complex historical, cultural, geopolitical, and religious frame-
work. Strongly influenced by the successful battle against the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan; al-Qaida strategy depicted the United
States as a weaker adversary than the ruthless Soviet Union. Bin
Ladin himself described the strategic results of the 9/11 attacks as
demoralizing the United States, causing the U.S. government to
restrict civil liberties, and—perhaps most importantly—galvanizing
Muslims around the world and forcing them to choose sides. “Our
goal is for our (world Islamic) nation to unite in the face of the
Christian crusade,” bin Ladin said after the attacks.

Tight Operational Security

Contrary to some claims, the infiltration of the 9/11 hijackers into the
United States and their operations in America were not perfect. For
example, most of the conspirators made obvious errors in their visa
applications and once in America some of them associated with indi-
viduals under scrutiny by the FBI. But in general the plot reflected
strong security and no doubt factored in the U.S. government’s lim-
ited domestic intelligence capabilities.

Most of the hijackers did not have terrorist records, helping them

escape the attention of U.S. intelligence.

Fifteen of the men were from

Saudi Arabia, whose citizens faced relatively little scrutiny from the
U.S. visa officials. They got passports and visas under their real names,

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

Does the LAX bomber fit the profile of twenty-first century
terrorism?

How were the LAX bomber operations different from the
9/11 attacks? How were the operations similar?

Will future attacks be more like that of the LAX bomber or
the 9/11 hijackers?

What lessons should have been drawn from the millenium
bomb plot?

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and then entered the United States from different locations at different
times. In accordance with the al-Qaida manual, the men shunned the
facial hair and garb of traditional Muslims. They were familiar with
Western culture and able to navigate American society. They clearly
attempted to keep a low profile, shopping at Wal-Mart and eating at
places such as Pizza Hut. According to the CIA, the hijackers avoided
laptops in favor of public Internet connections and used at least 133
different prepaid calling cards on a variety of phones.

Based on statements by bin Ladin and other information, while the

hijackers knew they were participating in a “martyrdom”—or sui-
cide—operation, many did not know details of the mission or its tar-
gets until it was well under way.

In the vocabulary of intelligence,

the plot was “tightly compartmented” and difficult to penetrate.

Effective Execution

Al-Qaida also proved skilled at managing operations. When Flight 77
hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar proved to be terri-
ble flight students, Hani Hanjur arrived back in the United States.
Suspected plotters Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Zakaria Essabar couldn’t
get into the United States, but the plot went on. Muhammad Atta,
who piloted the first plane into the World Trade Center, had visa
problems when trying to reenter the United States in January 2001
and was caught driving without a license, but managed to avoid
drawing the attention of authorities. Other hijackers escaped detec-
tion during traffic stops. Even when Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested
in August 2001 by FBI agents who considered him a possible suicide
hijacker, the plan was not derailed. Days after the arrest, the plotters
began buying their tickets. And on the morning of 9/11, many of their
plotters and their weapons made it through last-minute security
screenings. The ability of the terrorists to seize four aircraft and suc-
cessfully guide three of them into their targets reflected superb plan-
ning, significant skill and superior tactical execution.

E F F E C T S O F T W E N T Y - F I R S T C E N T U R Y T E R R O R I S M

The 2001 attacks certainly qualify as one of the worst crimes in
human history. Even considered in military terms, the human and

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financial destruction of 9/11 mark them as among the world’s most
devastating attacks. While other uses of force have claimed more
lives, few have combined such terrible human losses with the mas-
sive economic damage of 9/11, impacts that were magnified by the
anthrax attacks that occurred later in 2001.

The human cost of 9/11 can be measured in both physical and psy-
chological terms. By either calculation, the attacks exacted a terrible
price on the United States.

Life and Limb

Nearly 3,000 people were killed by the attack, many dying after
excruciating physical and psychological ordeals. For those without
personal connection to these losses, the scope of the suffering can
only be grasped fleetingly, perhaps in the awful images of people
choosing to leap hundreds of feet to their deaths from the World
Trade Center rather than face the conflagration, or the haunting final
phone calls from passengers on the hijacked aircraft. The physical
pain of 9/11 will continue for decades among those hurt in the
attacks. An untold number of victims, estimated in the thousands,
suffered injuries that day and in the ensuing rescue and cleanup oper-
ations, some sustaining burns or other wounds that damaged them
for life. In a reflection of the same trends exploited by the terrorists,
many of those harmed on 9/11 were born abroad; the attack killed
people from some 80 nations, including a significant number from
predominantly Muslim countries

Psychological

As discussed earlier, terrorism involves attacks on one set of victims
to instill fear in another. Judged this way, the 9/11 attacks set a terri-
ble new standard. Up to 10 million U.S. adults knew someone who
had been killed or injured in the attacks. Almost every American, and
vast numbers of other people around the globe, experienced the
attacks through a suffocating flow of media reports. Research indi-
cated that many millions of Americans outside New York City and
Washington, DC, experienced negative psychological symptoms such
as nightmares, flashbacks, and other anxiety symptoms linked to
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from September 11.

A study

Human Costs

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showing increased use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana by
Manhattan residents after 9/11 raised concerns about yet another
type of damage to public health from the attack.

The September 11 Fund, a charity, reported providing cash and

services to 100,000 victims, including relatives of those killed, people
wounded in the attack, and those who lost employment or housing
because of 9/11. By one estimate, 6,000 New Yorkers were displaced
from their residences in lower Manhattan. While most were able to
return home in the weeks after the attacks, their neighborhood had
been transformed from a bustling economic center to a devastated
graveyard smothered in the acrid dust of crushed concrete and incin-
erated human remains.

The 9/11 attacks were intended to damage America’s government,
military, and economy. They achieved their greatest success with the
last. “Those that were there (in the World Trade Center) are men that
supported the biggest economic power in the world,” said bin Ladin
after the attacks.

He later exhorted his followers: “Never be afraid

of their (the U.S.) multitudes, for their hearts are empty while their
strength has begun to weaken—militarily and economically. This was
particularly true after the blessed day of New York, by the grace of
Allah, when their losses reached more than one trillion dollars, fol-
lowing the attack and its aftermath … Praise be to Allah.”

Bin Ladin

grossly exaggerated the impact of his work. But while the economic
damage caused by 9/11 was not enough to cause fundamental harm
to the U.S. economy, it did significant financial injury to many loca-
tions, sectors, corporations, and individuals.

Short-Term Costs

The most obvious financial costs of the attacks were in the people
killed and injured and the buildings, infrastructure, airplanes, and
other assets destroyed and damaged on 9/11. Those costs have been
estimated at $25 to $60 billion in life and property losses, with imme-
diate insurance costs in the $36 billion to $54 billion range.

These

immediate, direct losses combined with short-term lost economic out-
put and other damage in the hours and days after the attack.
Economic aftershocks rippled through the economy as buildings
were evacuated, flights were cancelled, and stock trading halted.

Financial

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Consumers reduced their spending, and investors decreased their tol-
erance for risk. Companies in the airline, aerospace, travel, tourism,
insurance, lodging, restaurant, and recreation sectors reported drops
in demand. During 2001 and 2002, more than 145,000 workers in 34
states lost their jobs for reasons directly or indirectly linked to 9/11,
according to a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many
were from the airline and hotel industries. Because the report counted
only certain types of layoffs, the actual number of job losses was
almost certainly higher.

Long-Term Costs and the “Terrorism Tax”

The long-term costs of the attack include everything from the impact
of loans granted to airlines by the U.S. government to the so-called
terrorism tax, which describes increased costs for security. These
expenditures include government spending on increased national
defense, new homeland security programs, corporate security
expenses, travel delays, higher insurance costs, increased red tape,
higher shipping costs, increased expenses from immigration restric-
tions, slower mail, disaster planning, and backup sites for business
and government organizations. For example, additional airline secu-
rity has cost $11 billion by one estimate.

Other costs, while harder to calculate, are clearly significant—a

group of U.S. business organizations estimated that problems with the
visa system for foreign business travelers coming to the United States
cost more than $30 billion from 2002 to 2004 in lost sales, extra
expenses, relocation costs, and other losses.

The total terrorism tax is

certainly many billions of dollars a year on an ongoing basis.
Economists assume that such spending diverts investment from more
financially productive areas, depressing growth. On the other hand, it
can also be argued that good counterterrorism measures can promote
growth, protecting activities from disruptions and instilling consumer
and costumer confidence. Additionally, some security measures may
have economic benefits such as improving the efficiency and manage-
ment of supply chains. In short, while there is a general consensus that
security has a significant influence on the economy, the long-term pos-
itive and negative impacts of the terrorist tax remain to be seen.

The impact of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. economy are a case in

point. While estimates vary widely, in total the economy of New York

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City alone lost $83 billion due to the attacks, while total damage to the
United States easily exceeded $100 billion.

Strictly speaking, and as

evaluated by such measures as percentage of gross domestic product,
this loss did not produce a fundamental impact on the U.S. economy,
which began recovering from a recession not long after the attacks.
However, it did create a substantial hardship for many Americans.

H I G H L Y E F F I C I E N T A T T A C K

In the terrible calculus of combat, opponents must weigh the costs of
their campaigns against the damage they will inflict on the enemy.
Viewed in this way, al-Qaida proved highly efficient, at least when
considered solely in relation to the direct impact of 9/11 on the attack-
ers and victims. Al-Qaida’s direct expenditures on the 9/11 attacks
were between $400,000 to $500,000.

For that amount, plus the loss of

19 trained operatives, the terrorists killed some 3,000 Americans and
caused more than $100 billion in economic damages.

T H R E A T O F W E A P O N S O F M A S S D E S T R U C T I O N

Perhaps the most fundamental lesson of 9/11 was that America’s ene-
mies had both the motive and means to cause mass casualties in the
United States. While this seems obvious in retrospect, preventing
such an attack was never a driving priority of the U.S. government
prior to 2001.

While the 9/11 attacks involved the instruments of the everyday

world, the interest of terrorists in wrecking widespread havoc
prompted greater concerns over the potential use of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). These are nuclear, chemical, biological, radiolog-
ical, and highly explosive weapons capable of inflicting mass casual-
ties and destruction.

Certainly al-Qaida leaders have not hidden their desire to obtain

nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. “Acquiring weapons for the
defense of Muslims is a religious duty,” according to Usama bin
Laden. “If I have indeed acquired these weapons, then I thank God
for enabling me to do so. And if I seek to acquire these weapons, I am

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carrying out a duty. It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to pos-
sess the weapons that would prevent the infidels from inflicting harm
on Muslims.”

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

F R O M T H E S O U R C E :

THE ANTHRAX LETTERS—A SIGN OF THE TIMES?

A week after the airplane strikes of 9/11, another threat few
expected shocked Americans. Letters containing anthrax bacte-
ria were mailed from Trenton, New Jersey, to the offices of NBC
and The Post in New York City, and probably the National
Enquirer in Miami, Florida, on September 18, 2001. On October
9, 2001, letters were mailed to Senate offices in Washington, DC.
In addition to people being exposed where the letters were
opened, postal workers in Trenton and Washington, as well as a
woman in Connecticut, contracted inhalation anthrax from
spores that leaked from the letters.

Text of Letter Sent to Senator Tom Daschle on October 9, 2001

09-11-01
YOU CAN NOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
DEATH TO ISRAEL.
ALLAH IS GREAT

Overall, infections from the anthrax letters killed 5 and sick-

ened 13 others, and focused attention on a class of weapons that
represent a dangerous and growing threat.While the letters
caused death and injury to only a handful of Americans, they
disrupted the lives of millions. Perhaps more troubling than the
attacks themselves were the miscues, faulty assumptions, poorly
coordinated response, and media frenzy following in their wake,

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CHAPTER 2 • THE RISE OF MODERN TERRORISM

as well as a halting law enforcement investigation that three
years after the act had still failed to identify the culprit behind
the anthrax letters. The attack served as an object lesson in why
mass destruction may have a strong appeal to the practitioners
of twenty-first century terrorism.

F R O M T H E S O U R C E :

THE ANTHRAX LETTERS—A SIGN OF THE TIMES?

Text of Letter Sent to Senator Tom Daschle on October 9, 2001

09-11-01
YOU CAN NOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
DEATH TO ISRAEL.
ALLAH IS GREAT

Overall, infections from the anthrax letters killed 5 and sick-

ened 13 others, and focused attention on a class of weapons that
represent a dangerous and growing threat. While the letters

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 37

In part, U.S. policy had accounted for these threats by focusing on

preventing the spread of WMD. But just as global trends had facili-
tated the 9/11 attack, they also increased the risk that terrorists could
acquire WMD. Among other factors were an increased availability of
critical technologies and experts; the greater ease of international
transportation; and the spread of knowledge through the Internet and
other media. Ironically, U.S. assistance to Pakistan and the
Mujahadeen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and the
Soviet collapse that was hastened by that assistance, may have indi-
rectly facilitated the flow of WMD technology and expertise.
Scientists and stockpiles from the former Soviet Union were opened
to exploitation. At the same time Pakistan was cooperating with the
United States against the Soviets, its experts were developing and
proliferating nuclear technology. By 2003, the U.S. government
warned: “Presently, al Qa’ida and associated groups possess at least a
crude capability to use chemical, biological, and radiological agents
and devices in their attacks.”

C H A P T E R S U M M A R Y

The 9/11 attacks revealed a fundamental truth to America. No longer
could reasonable people deny the need to prepare for enemies—
whether al-Qaida and other large terrorist organizations, or smaller
groups and individuals—capable of devising and executing sophisti-

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

caused death and injury to only a handful of Americans, they
disrupted the lives of millions. Perhaps more troubling than the
attacks themselves were the miscues, faulty assumptions, poorly
coordinated response, and media frenzy following in their wake,
as well as a halting law enforcement investigation that three
years after the act had still failed to identify the culprit behind
the anthrax letters. The attack served as an object lesson in why
mass destruction may have a strong appeal to the practitioners
of twenty-first century terrorism.

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cated strategies to unleash weapons of mass destruction against the
U.S. homeland. As horrendous as 9/11’s destruction proved, it was
clear that an even more devastating attack was possible in the future.
This finally provided the stimulus to overhaul America’s homeland
security policies, prompting far more aggressive measures to protect
its citizens and allies. Literally within hours of the attack, American
policy makers began planning sweeping reforms, major investments,
and global operations. The private sector and citizenry also began to
change their behaviors. The results would produce fundamental
changes at all levels of American society.

C H A P T E R Q U I Z

What are three characteristics of al-Qaida’s twenty-first century
terrorist organization? Why are they significant?

Identify two types of modern technology used by twenty-first
century terrorists. Explain why they might be important terrorist
tools.

What were the consequences of the 9/11 attack?

Why might terrorists be more likely to employ weapons of mass
destruction in the future?

N O T E S

1. The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (February 2003), p. 7.

2. John C. K. Daly, “Revealed Nationalities of Guantanamo,” UPI (February 4, 2004),

www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20040204-051623-5923.

3. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, “Overview of the

Enemy, Staff Statement No. 15,” p. 10, www.9-
11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/staff_statement_15.pdf.

4. The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, p. 8.

5. Gabriel Weimann, “WWWTerror.Net: How Terrorists Use the Internet,” Special Report

Number 16, U.S. Institute of Peace, www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr116.html.

6. Budget estimated by the CIA as reported in “Overview of the Enemy, Staff Statement No.

15”, p. 11.

7. Ibid, p. 8.

8. CNN.Com, “Transcript of Bin Laden Interview” (February 5, 2002),

www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript/index.html.

CHAPTER 2 • THE RISE OF MODERN TERRORISM

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9. Testimony of George J. Tenet before the Joint Congressional Inquiry into Terrorist Attacks

against the United States (June 18, 2002), 9-11congress.netfirms.com/Tenet_June.html.

10. Department of Defense, “UBL Transcript” (December 13, 2001),

www.defenselink.mil/news/Dec2001/d20011213ubl.pdf.

11. George Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress” (September 20, 2001), www.white-

house.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html.

12. William E. Schlenger, et al., “Psychological Reactions to Terrorist Attacks: Findings from

the National Study of Americans’ Reactions to September 11,” Journal of the American
Medical Association (August 2002): 581–588.

13. David Vlahov, et al., “Sustained Increased Consumption of Cigarettes, Alcohol, and

Marijuana among Manhattan Residents after September 11, 2001,” American Journal of
Public Health, 94/2 (February 2004): 253–254.

14. CNN.Com, “Transcript of Bin Laden’s October Interview” (February 5, 2002),

www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript/index.html.

15. Aljazeera.Com, “Message to Iraqis” (October 2003),

english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ACB47241-D25F-46CB-B673-56FAB1C2837F.htm.

16. General Accounting Office, “Review of Studies of the Economic Impact of the September

11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center” (May 29, 2002),
www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2003/sept/wk2/art03.htm.

17. Department of Labor, “Extended Mass Layoffs and the 9/11 Attacks” (September 10,

2003), www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2003/sept/wk2/art03.htm.

18. Gregg Easterbrook, “Fear Factor in an Age of Terror,” New York Times (June 27, 2004): A1,

www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/weekinreview/27east.html.

19. National Foreign Trade Council, “Visa Backlog Costs U.S. Exporters More Than $30 Billion

Since 2002, New Study Finds” (June 6, 2004), www.nftc.org.

20. Estimates of the damages wrought by the 9/11 attack vary depending on the criteria used.

The Insurance Information Institute set the initial cost at $40 billion [Insurance
Information Institute, Catastrophes:Insurance Issues, Part 1 of 2 (January 9, 2002).]. A study
by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York put the cost at $33 to $36 billion. The Federal
Reserve Bank’s estimate included only immediate earning losses, property damage, and
cleanup and restoration costs through June 2002 and did not cover long-term productivity
and tax revenue losses [Jason Bram, et al., “Measuring the Effects of the September 11
Attack on New York City,” FRBNY Economic Policy Review, 8/2 (November 2002): 5]. The
City of New York Comptroller set the total economic impact on the city at between $82.8
and $94 billion [Comptroller, City of New York, One Year Later: The Fiscal Impact of 9/11 on
New York City (New York: City of New York, September 4, 2002), p. 1.] The U.S. General
Accounting Office reported that it believed the most accurate assessment places the total
direct and indirect costs at $83 billion [U.S. General Accounting Office, Impact of Terrorist
Attacks on the World Trade Center, GAO-02-7000R (May 29, 2002), p. 2]. In addition,
Wilbur Smith Associates estimated the long-term costs of the 9/11 attacks resulting from
reduced commercial aviation range from $68.3 to $90.2 billion [Wilbur Smith Associates,
“The Economic Impact of Civil Aviation on the U.S. Economy—Update 2000,” (2002)].

21. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, “Outline of the

9/11 Plot, Staff Statement No. 16,” p. 11, www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hear-
ing12/staff_statement_16.pdf.

22. Declan McCullagh, “Does Osama Have a Nuclear Bomb?” Wired News (September 28,

2001): 1, www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47158,00.html.

23. National Infrastructure Protection Center, “Homeland Security Information Update: Al

Qa’ida Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Threat and Basic
Countermeasures” (February 12, 2003),
www.nipc.gov/publications/infobulletins/2003/ib03-003.htm.

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C H A P T E R

THE BIRTH OF MODERN
HOMELAND SECURITY

The National Response
to the 9/11 Attacks

America is no longer protected by vast oceans. We are protected from attack
only by vigorous action abroad, and increased vigilance at home.

President George W. Bush, Jan. 29, 2002

C H A P T E R O V E R V I E W

Every sector of American society was changed by the 9/11 attacks on
the United States and the offensive and defensive U.S. government
strategies created to meet future threats. Many of the initiatives, in
both the public and private sectors, challenged traditional
approaches taken by the United States to ensure domestic security.
These changes featured aggressive new U.S. foreign and military
policies and efforts to cooperate with other countries in the war on
terror. On the home front, they included: reforming the intelligence
community, refocusing the FBI and other federal agencies, enacting
sweeping legislation to strengthen law enforcement, and concluding
the most far-reaching reorganization of the federal government in
more than 50 years. These vast changes also extended to state and
local governments and the private sector. In the end, the changes
driven by 9/11 have provided the foundation for a modern system of
homeland security.

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C H A P T E R L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Describe the Bush Doctrine and its implications for U.S. for-

eign policy.

2. Explain how the federal government was reorganized to focus

on homeland security.

3. Describe the major tenets of the national homeland security

strategy.

4. Define the changes in the U.S. approach to domestic countert-

errorism after 9/11.

5. Identify the major homeland security challenges faced by state

and local governments and the private sector.

T H E R E S P O N S E T O
T W E N T Y - F I R S T C E N T U R Y T E R R O R I S M

As exhausted rescue workers dug through the smoking remains of
the World Trade Center and a large American flag billowed over the
hole torn in the Pentagon’s side, the Bush administration mapped out
its response to twenty-first century terrorism.

Some of the early steps

were defensive: continuing the grounding of civilian aircraft; closing
key government offices and monuments; providing fighter jet cover
over major cities; and launching a dragnet for “special interest” aliens
and others suspected of terrorist links. But the first major strategic
change centered on taking the battle to the enemy by invading
Afghanistan and crippling foreign terrorist organizations with inter-
national ties.

T A K I N G T H E O F F E N S I V E

The president announced an unprecedented offensive against
global terrorism in a speech to Congress on September 20, 2001. The
speech singled out three global threats that required a concerted
response: terrorist organizations with global reach, weak states that
harbored transnational terrorist groups, and “rogue” states that

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might aid terrorists or undertake terrorist acts themselves. During
the speech, President George W. Bush declared, “Every nation in
every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or
you are with the terrorists.” In his speech the president added that,
“From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or sup-
port terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile
regime.” The declarations in this speech are commonly referred to
as the Bush Doctrine.

The avowal that nations supporting terrorism were to be considered
hostile regimes was significant in light of the U.S. National Security
Strategy published by the administration the following September.
The strategy is a document required by law that outlines the overall
ends, ways, and means of ensuring national security. The 2002 strat-
egy reaffirmed the nation’s right of preemption, which allows coun-
tries to defend themselves against an imminent threat before they
are attacked. The strategy broadly interpreted the United States’
right to forestall or prevent terrorist acts, particularly where the
threat of weapons of mass destruction might be involved.

Opposition to the Bush Doctrine

The Bush Doctrine proved highly controversial, particularly as its
tenets were put into practice. There were two main objections to
declaring war on terrorism. First, as discussed earlier, there is no
universal definition of terrorism, and thus no clear enemy. Second,
combating terrorists, whoever they are, is not primarily a military
operation, but a matter of law enforcement and social, cultural, and
economic conflict. It is not “traditional” war, as one U.S. defense
analyst declared, in the sense understood by military professionals.
Wars, he argues, are supposed to have “clear beginnings and ends
... [and] clear standards for measuring success in the form of terri-
tory gained and enemy forces destroyed.”

In short, critics of the

Bush Doctrine declared the global war on terrorism was inappro-
priate because its goals were open-ended, unbounded, and
unlikely to achieve decisive results. At the same time, they sug-
gested many around the world would interpret U.S. efforts as
“empire building,” efforts to expand American power rather than
enhance global security.

Preemption

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Support for the Bush Doctrine

In contrast, proponents of the president’s strategy concluded the
United States had few practical alternatives. U.S. counterterrorism
efforts had been insufficient to stem the growth of transnational ter-
rorist networks and al-Qaida had publicly committed itself to the
destruction of the United States.

In addition, they argued the means

used to defend the nation during the Cold War would be inadequate
to deal with the security threats of the twenty-first century. Cold War
strategy relied on deterrence (the threat of nuclear war) and contain-
ment, the use of military, political, diplomatic, and economic power to
limit the spread of communism. It would be difficult to apply deter-
rence and containment as practiced against the Soviet Union to dis-
parate transnational groups and determined rogue states.

The only

solution was to go after the terrorists, while remaining prepared to
thwart or respond to the attack that would inevitably ensue. This
included plans to eliminate the political breeding grounds of terrorists
in the Middle East, which President Bush later called the “forward
strategy of freedom,” a doctrine that would grow to include the liber-
ation of Iraq.

On October 7, 2001, following repeated refusals by the Taliban

rulers of Afghanistan to expel bin Ladin, the United States and an
antiterrorist coalition of countries began military operations to root
out both the Taliban and al-Qaida. Under attack by U.S. airpower and
anti-Taliban ground forces, organized opposition disintegrated rap-
idly, and Kabul, the Afghan capital, fell on November 13, 2001. Many
key senior Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, including bin Ladin, escaped
capture. Forces from the new Afghanistan government, as well as the
U.S. military, and troops in neighboring Pakistan continue to pursue
elements of the Taliban and al-Qaida in the region.

I N T E R N A T I O N A L C O O P E R A T I O N

While U.S. military power proved instrumental in dismantling ter-
rorist sanctuaries, American combat operations alone were insuffi-
cient to take the offensive in the war on terror. The United States also
required international cooperation both to pursue terrorists and
enhance homeland security. Effective cooperation also had to expand

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CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

I S S U E :

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION ON PREEMPTION

Excerpt from the 2002 National Security Strategy

While the right of preemption is well-established in interna-
tional law, the United States has never included a statement in its
national security strategy that explicitly addressed the issue
before the 9/11 attacks. The 2002 National Security Strategy,
released in the wake of September 11, contained explicit lan-
guage on the subject.

For centuries, international law recognized that nations need
not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to
defend themselves against forces that present an imminent
danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists
often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the exis-
tence of an imminent threat—most often a visible mobiliza-
tion of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.

We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the

capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries. Rogue
states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conven-
tional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead,
they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of
weapons of mass destruction—weapons that can be easily
concealed, delivered covertly, and used without warning.

The targets of these attacks are our military forces and

our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the
principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demon-
strated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian
casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these
losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists
acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has long maintained the option of

preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our
national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the

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PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

risk of inaction—and the more compelling the case for tak-
ing anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncer-
tainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.
To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries,
the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.

The United States will not use force in all cases to pre-

empt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption
as a pretext for aggression. Yet in an age where the enemies
of civilization openly and actively seek the world’s most
destructive technologies, the United States cannot remain
idle while dangers gather. We will always proceed deliber-
ately, weighing the consequences of our actions. To support
preemptive options, we will:

•

build better, more integrated intelligence capabilities
to provide timely, accurate information on threats,
wherever they may emerge;

•

coordinate closely with allies to form a common
assessment of the most dangerous threats; and

•

continue to transform our military forces to ensure
our ability to conduct rapid and precise operations
to achieve decisive results.

The purpose of our actions will always be to eliminate

a specific threat to the United States or our allies and
friends. The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force
measured, and the cause just.

What are the grounds for preemptive action and what are
the limitations in practicing preemption?

Is the concept of preemption expressed in the strategy con-
sistent with how the United States has used force in the
past, or is this something new?

How do allies and enemies interpret the preemption dec-
laration?

Does preemption increase national and homeland security?

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beyond military means, including areas such as covert operations,
intelligence sharing, law enforcement, and trade and travel security.
After 9/11, over 100 nations offered the United States some form of
assistance or support, perhaps most prominently America’s tradi-
tional military ally Great Britain. The United States discovered that
in the war against global terrorism a class of states that could be
termed the “new allies” was also vital. These were states that had
ambivalent relations with the United States in the past, but now
found themselves in a situation where their internal security con-
cerns and regional objectives coincided with U.S. interests in pursu-
ing global terrorism. They provided basing and overflight rights,
intelligence sharing, and counterterrorism support for attacking al-
Qaida sanctuaries overseas. In Asia, the rapidly expanding joint
effort by the United States and Kazakhstan offered one example of a
new alliance at work.

Support also came from organizations such as the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO), originally formed to defend the West
against the Soviet Union, and America’s only multinational military
alliance of major consequence. After the attacks of September 11, the
Alliance invoked Article 5 of its charter (the provision for collective
self-defense) for the first time in its history. This was a powerful
statement of solidarity and a positive sign for future cooperation.
NATO also provided assistance in postwar Afghanistan. On
September 28, 2001, the United Nations Security Council adopted
Resolution 1373 which called for criminalizing terrorist activities,
denying funds and safe havens, and establishing a committee to
monitor implementation.

Other international organizations also

had a part to play, including the European Union (EU),
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (as the only
pan-European body), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. The United
States and the EU, for example, enacted new joint measures to
freeze terrorist assets and share intelligence. Additionally, a long list
of organizations, such as Interpol, contributed to combating
transnational threats. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also
assumed important functions in homeland security and counterter-
rorism. For example, after 9/11 the International Maritime
Organization set stricter standards for the security of ports and

CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 47

international shipping. Nevertheless, harmonizing the efforts of
these organizations with U.S. security remained a complicated
process. In some cases, NGO activities actually proved detrimental
and were even accused of being fronts for transnational crime and
terrorist activities. The charitable group, the Holy Land Foundation,
for example, is alleged to have funneled over $150 million to the ter-
rorist group Hamas.

Cooperation between the United States and other countries,

multinational organizations, and nongovernment groups took
many forms, from public diplomacy to covert operations. One
important avenue of international cooperation was a crackdown on
monetary instruments used to finance terrorist attacks, such as the
hawala, a short-term, discountable, negotiable promissory note or
bill of exchange used widely in the Islamic world. While not limited
to Muslim countries, the hawala has come to be identified with
Islamic banking. It was alleged that billions of dollars were trans-
ferred through these exchanges and that some hawala dealers had
ties to terrorists.

After 9/11, a concerted effort to combat money

laundering, including the use of the hawala, was directed at terror-
ist financial networks. In the year after 9/11, the White House
reported that $113.5 million in terrorist assets had been frozen
worldwide: $35.3 million in the United States and $78.2 million
overseas.

D E F E N S I V E E F F O R T S

On the home front, the Bush administration set out to enhance inter-
agency and intergovernmental cooperation, which had been lacking
prior to 9/11. These goals were pursued by new legal initiatives; cre-
ation of the White House Office of Homeland Security; the drafting of
a national homeland security strategy; plans to create a separate
regional military command for the defense of North America; and a
proposal for a federal Homeland Security Department. Improving
airline safety and heightening security awareness for other critical
infrastructure systems were also focal points. For example, the gov-
ernment recruited, trained, and deployed 45,000 federal security
screeners to airports across the nation. At the same time, the anthrax

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 48

attacks of fall 2001 galvanized support for increased defensive meas-
ures against WMD.

In response to the September 11 attack, Congress passed a number of
significant pieces of legislation. The Aviation and Transportation
Security Act established a federal agency to supervise security of com-
mercial aviation. The Maritime Transportation Security Act generated
new requirements for the security of ports and shipping. The Enhanced
Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act significantly expanded the
information to be collected on visitors to the United States. The Public
Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act man-
dated additional measures for protecting the food and drug supply.

Perhaps the most significant and controversial of the new laws

passed by Congress was the Uniting and Strengthening America by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct
Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act. The Act created new crimes, new
penalties, and new procedural efficiencies for use against domestic
and international terrorists. Although it was not without safeguards,
critics contended some of its provisions went too far. Although it
granted many of the enhancements sought by the Department of
Justice, others are concerned that it did not go far enough.

The PATRIOT Act did serve to improve U.S. counterterrorism in

four critical areas. First, it promoted the sharing of information
between intelligence and law enforcement investigations—tearing
down the “wall” that hampered investigations before 9/11. Second,
the Act authorized additional law enforcement tools for pursuing
terrorists, tools that were already available for investigating other
serious crimes, such as drug smuggling. Third, it facilitated surveil-
lance of terrorists using new technologies like cell phones and the
Internet. Fourth, the Act provided for judicial and congressional
oversight of the new authorities granted in the legislation.

One of the first initiatives in the executive branch was the establish-
ment of an Office of Homeland Security within the Executive Office
of the President in October 2001. Headed by the Assistant to the
President for Homeland Security, former Pennsylvania Governor
Tom Ridge, the mission of the Office was to develop and coordinate
the implementation of a comprehensive national homeland security

Reorganization

in the White

House

The PATRIOT Act

and Other

Congressional

Initiatives

CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 49

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

F R O M T H E S O U R C E :

EXCERPT FROM THE USA PATRIOT ACT

The USA PATRIOT Act contains over 800 sections, many of
which are not controversial and have little to do with civil liberty
issues. Among the most important provisions of the law were
initiatives to remove the “wall” between law enforcement and
intelligence efforts to share information.

Section 203. Authority to Share Criminal Investigative Information

(a) AUTHORITY TO SHARE GRAND JURY INFORMA-
TION-

(1) IN GENERAL- Rule 6(e)(3)(C) of the Federal Rules of
Criminal Procedure is amended to read as follows:

`(C)(i) Disclosure otherwise prohibited by this rule of mat-
ters occurring before the grand jury may also be made—

`(I) when so directed by a court preliminarily to or in con-
nection with a judicial proceeding;

`(II) when permitted by a court at the request of the defen-
dant, upon a showing that grounds may exist for a motion
to dismiss the indictment because of matters occurring
before the grand jury;

`(III) when the disclosure is made by an attorney for the
government to another Federal grand jury;

`(IV) when permitted by a court at the request of an attor-
ney for the government, upon a showing that such matters
may disclose a violation of state criminal law, to an appro-
priate official of a state or subdivision of a state for the pur-
pose of enforcing such law; or

`(V) when the matters involve foreign intelligence or coun-
terintelligence (as defined in section 3 of the National
Security Act of 1947 (50 U.S.C. 401a)), or foreign intelligence
information (as defined in clause (iv) of this subparagraph),
to any Federal law enforcement, intelligence, protective,

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 50

CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

immigration, national defense, or national security official
in order to assist the official receiving that information in
the performance of his official duties.

`(ii) If the court orders disclosure of matters occurring before
the grand jury, the disclosure shall be made in such manner,
at such time, and under such conditions as the court may
direct.

`(iii) Any Federal official to whom information is disclosed
pursuant to clause (i)(V) of this subparagraph may use that
information only as necessary in the conduct of that person’s
official duties subject to any limitations on the unauthorized
disclosure of such information. Within a reasonable time after
such disclosure, an attorney for the government shall file
under seal a notice with the court stating the fact that such
information was disclosed and the departments, agencies, or
entities to which the disclosure was made.

`(iv) In clause (i)(V) of this subparagraph, the term ‘foreign
intelligence information’ means—

`(I) information, whether or not concerning a United States
person, that relates to the ability of the United States to pro-
tect against—

`(aa) actual or potential attack or other grave hostile acts of-
a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power;

`(bb) sabotage or international terrorism by a foreign power
or an agent of a foreign power; or

`(cc) clandestine intelligence activities by an intelligence
service or network of a foreign power or by an agent of for-
eign power; or

`(II) information, whether or not concerning a United States
person, with respect to a foreign power or foreign territory
that relates to—

`(aa) the national defense or the security of the United
States; or

`(bb) the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 51

strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats. The presi-
dential executive order which established the office also created the
Homeland Security Council of cabinet- and subcabinet-level officers
to coordinate federal activities.

The National Strategy for Homeland Security

The Office of Homeland Security released its national strategy in July
2002, defining homeland security as “a concerted national effort to
prevent terrorist attacks within the United States, reduce America’s
vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover
from attacks that do occur.”

The strategy established three strategic objectives: (1) preventing

attack, (2) reducing vulnerabilities, and (3) minimizing damage. It
organized activities into six mission areas: intelligence and warning;
border and transportation security; domestic counterterrorism; pro-
tecting critical infrastructure and key assets; defending against cata-
strophic terrorism; and emergency preparedness and response.

The nature of the terrorist threat and its very definition are the

source of controversy, but The National Strategy for Homeland Security
defined it as: “(A)ny premeditated, unlawful act dangerous to human
life or public welfare that is intended to intimidate or coerce civilian
populations or governments.”

The first major reorganization of federal agencies after 9/11 was the
Department of Defense’s establishment of a new military command,
U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) on October 1, 2002. Before
9/11 no single military command was responsible for the defense of
the United States. NORTHCOM was tasked with the land, aerospace,
and maritime defense of the continental United States, Alaska,
Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, parts of the
Caribbean, and the contiguous waters of the Atlantic and Pacific (out
to 500 miles). NORTHCOM also offered military assistance to civilian
authorities under the lead of other federal agencies.

Despite initial misgivings inside and out of the Bush administration
about its potential cost in money and potential bureaucratic delays,
the administration recommended the creation of a new federal
department responsible for homeland security. Passed on November

Establishing the

Department of

Homeland

Security (DHS)

Changes in the

Department of

Defense

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 52

25, 2002, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 merged over 22 federal
entities and 180,000 employees into a single department responsible
for immigration enforcement, border and transportation security,
information analysis and infrastructure protection, science and tech-
nology research and development for homeland security, and emer-
gency preparedness and response. The DHS also assumed control for
the Transportation Security Administration, which had been estab-
lished to screen commercial airline passengers and cargo, as well as
oversee security practices for other forms of transportation including
rail and public transit systems. However, the Bush administration
chose not to fold the FBI—the lead law enforcement agency for com-
bating terrorism —into the DHS; it was a decision that sparked con-
troversy. Other critical homeland security missions also remained
outside the DHS, including many activities involving bioterrorism,
which came under the Department of Health and Human Services
and its subordinate organizations. In addition, the administration
rejected calls to create a dedicated domestic intelligence agency. In the
months after the creation of the DHS, hopes for major and immediate
gains in homeland security from the reorganization sometimes
proved unrealistic.

Other significant federal initiatives involved changes in the strategy,
resources, priorities, and organizations used to conduct domestic
counterterrorism operations. Prior to 9/11, domestic counterterror-
ism was largely considered a law enforcement matter, with more
emphasis on prosecuting terrorists than preemptively destroying ter-
rorist networks. After the attacks, priorities changed. The FBI dedi-
cated itself to preventing terrorism. For example, on May 29, 2002, FBI
Director Robert S. Mueller announced a restructuring of the agency
including establishing a national network of regional joint intera-
gency terrorism task forces. He also declared that combating terror-
ism would become the bureau’s primary mission.

Among the most significant efforts were initiatives to increase the

exchange of information among federal agencies and sharing intelli-
gence with state and local law enforcement. In this regard, the admin-
istration created two new organizations for improving the current
system. The first was the Terrorism Threat Integration Center (TTIC),
created on May 1, 2003. The TTIC was designed to be a central location

Intelligence and

Law

Enforcement

Reforms

CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 53

where all terrorist-related intelligence, both foreign and domestic,
could be gathered, coordinated, and assessed. Composed of elements
of the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland
Security, Department of State, and other intelligence agencies, it was
placed under the direction of the Director of Central Intelligence.

The second new organization created was the Terrorist Screening

Center (TSC) formed as an interagency group under the FBI to con-
solidate all terrorist watch lists into a single function and provide
around-the-clock access to local, state, and federal authorities. The
TSC was charged with bringing together databases that included the
State Department’s TIPOFF database, the FBI’s Violent Gang and
Terrorist Offender’s File, and the Homeland Security Department’s
many transportation security lists.

One of the most important lessons of September 11 was the reminder
of the critical role state and local governments play in homeland secu-
rity, brought home by the deaths of hundreds of first responders in
New York City and the key role of local agencies in responding to the
Pentagon crash site. Americans are governed by a collection of many
thousands of state and local jurisdictions. It is these jurisdictions that
create and execute most emergency plans and control the police, fire-
fighters, national guard troops, and others on the frontline of home-
land security. However, the capabilities among these governments to
contribute to homeland security and the initiatives they undertook
after 9/11 varied greatly. Before September 11, communities invested
most of their efforts toward improving physical security through law
enforcement. In addition, there was a spate of focus on information
security initiatives, centered primarily on preparations for Y2K, a
hugely expensive effort to ensure computer systems would not fail as
a result of trying to account for the change of dates in the year 2000.

Consequence management efforts had also long been a concern for

local authorities, but the emphasis was on responding to natural dis-
asters and conventional human-made calamities such as arson and
accidental chemical spills. After 9/11 there were often halting and
tentative movements to create a more holistic and integrated
approach to homeland security, but results were mixed. States like
New Jersey, for example, created their own counterterrorism offices.
The governor of New York proposed expanding the state’s investiga-

State and Local

Government

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 54

tive services for counterterrorism, amounting to about half the pro-
posed budget of the state police.

In total, at least 1,200 state and

local legislative acts were passed in the wake of September 11.

Still, response to 9/11 was uneven. Complicating the response was

the fact that communities had different needs and priorities. The
security requirements for large urban and industrial centers, agricul-
tural regions, and communities surrounding defense installations are
all different. Further exacerbating the challenge was a lack of national
preparedness standards establishing an expectation of the services
and capacity that should be provided by federal, state, and local
agencies.

In addition, state and local authorities complained that

bureaucratic rivalries and security regulations prevented federal offi-
cials from sharing critical intelligence with them. Finally, the fiscal
burdens of providing homeland security loomed large for many state
and local governments. By July 2002, state governments were pro-
jecting budget gaps totaling $58 billion. By some estimates additional
spending on homeland security by states and major cities after 9/11
topped $6.6 billion.

New York City alone reported spending more

than $200 million a year on counterterrorism programs.

The federal

government responded by providing billions of dollars in grants to
state and local homeland security agencies, but even this assistance
was decried as slow and inadequate.

After the September 11 attacks, there was widespread recognition that
the private sector—which controls an estimated 85 percent of
America’s critical infrastructures—had a central role to play in meet-
ing the challenge of protecting the homeland. There was, however, lit-
tle consensus on how best to coordinate their efforts, and, in fact, it
was difficult to assess the full scope of preparations and vulnerabili-
ties in the private sector. Much of the reported data was accumulated
from voluntary surveys, and many companies withhold proprietary
information. Still, one estimate concluded that spending on physical
and information security by the commercial sector in the United States
after the terrorist attacks quickly exceeded $30 billion per year.

Much of this investment was an extension of already existing pro-

grams designed to protect assets and ensure continued productivity
in the event of natural or human-made calamity. Even before 9/11,
commercial disaster recovery and continuity services were a growing

Private Sector

CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 55

business concern. One survey listed over 100 alternative work sites
and business recovery and data storage centers in the United States
operated by commercial vendors.

Events such as the bombing of the

Murrah Office building and the run-up to Y2K created a cottage
industry of firms specializing in disaster management and offering
training, support, and products to federal, state, and local govern-
ments. Despite efforts by the federal government to encourage infor-
mation sharing in the private sector, there remained a great deal of
uncertainty over how much additional effort was needed. For exam-
ple, many industries were unsure how to respond to official terrorist
warnings and what liability they might incur if they failed to take
additional security measures when the federal government recom-
mended greater precautions. Many executives also failed to see a
strong business case for increased investments in security, causing
critics to push for stronger government regulations.

The 9/11 attacks roused the citizenry of the United States as few
events had before. From the volunteers who responded to Ground
Zero to the many Americans who donated blood or money to the vic-
tims, the American people rushed to contribute after the attack. The
public also contributed to homeland security by providing informa-
tion to the authorities and, in cases such as the apprehension of the
Shoe Bomber aboard a commercial flight, directly prevented acts of
terrorism. However, the proposed Operation TIPS (Terrorism
Information and Prevention System), a plan to encourage everyone
from postal workers to truck drivers to report suspicious activity,
generated significant opposition from civil libertarians. The Bush
administration also moved to mobilize the public in less controversial
ways by creating the USA Freedom Corps, which enlisted citizens in
various volunteer activities. DHS also sought to enhance prepared-
ness through the Ready Campaign. The government estimated that
113 million Americans saw or read about the campaign and that
many responded by stocking emergency supplies or taking other
actions. However, certain government recommendations—such as
the advice to purchase duct tape as part of a shelter-in-place strat-
egy—became the butt of jokes. Subsequent polling also indicated
most Americans remained unaware of preparedness plans for their
communities, schools and workplaces.26

The American

Public

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 56

C H A P T E R S U M M A R Y

The dramatic changes following the 9/11 attacks created a new concept
of homeland security, in many cases reversing regulations, policies,
and assumptions that had been in force for decades. The federal gov-
ernment possessed the will, traditions, and money to reorganize itself
and change many of its operating procedures. But the process of
change was more complex for state and local governments and the pri-
vate sector, which often lacked resources and clear priorities. These key
players would continue to struggle to define their roles and responsi-
bilities for responding to the danger of transnational terrorism.

C H A P T E R Q U I Z

What are the major tenets of the Bush Doctrine?

What are the key elements of The National Strategy for
Homeland Security?

Which major organizations with homeland security missions
were not included in the new Department of Homeland
Security?

What obstacles exist to state and local governments playing a
greater role in providing homeland security?

N O T E S

1. The administration had actually begun to develop a more comprehensive strategy to elim-

inate the al-Qaida network in the spring and summer of 2001 [Prepared Statement of
Condoleezza Rice before the National Commission on Terrorist Attack upon the United
States (April 8, 2004), p. 3, www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing9/rice_state-
ment.pdf].

2. For the text of the speech see www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09.

3. The National Security Strategy of the United States, p. 15.

4. Jeffrey Record, “Bounding the Global War on Terrorism,” U.S. Army War College,

Strategic Studies Institute (December 2003), 4. See also Michael Vlahos, “Terror’s Mask:
Insurgency within Islam,” Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory (May
2002), p. 2.

5. See, for example, Richard Miniter, Losing Bin Ladin: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed

Global Terror (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2003); David Frum and Richard Pearle, An End to
Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2003).

CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 57

6. For further discussion, see Paul K. Davis and Brian Michael Jenkins, Deterrence and

Influence in Counterterrorism: A Component of the War on al-Qaida (Santa Monica: RAND,
2002).

7. One of the first published histories of the war was Robin Moore, The Hunt for Bin Ladin:

Task Force Dagger (New York: Random House, 2003).

8. See, for example, Joint press conference of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and

Minister of Defense Mukhtar Altynbayev at the Presidential Administration Building,
Astana, Kazakhstan (April 28, 2002), news transcript,
www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2002/t04282002_t0428kzk.html.

9. As of January 22, 2002, thirty-two countries reported to the committee on their activities to

fight terrorism and cut off support for terrorist groups, www.un.org/Docs/commit-
tees/1373/1373/reportsEng.htm.

10. Samir Abid Shiak, “Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions: A Survey,” Journal of Muslim

Minority Affairs 27/1 (1997), pp. 118–119.

11. New initiatives were based on the authority granted by the USA PATRIOT Act which

requires the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a system where banks can identify
account holders and match them to a list of suspected terrorists. See the International
Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, Title III of the
USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, Public Law 107-56, October 26, 2001.

12. Charles Doyle, “The USA Patriot Act: A Sketch,” Congressional Research Service (April 18,

2002), pp. 1–5; Rosemary Jenks, “The USA Patriot Act of 2001: A Summary of the Anti-
Terrorism Law’s Immigration-Related Provisions,” Center for Immigration Studies
(December 2001), pp. 1–3.

13. The National Strategy for Homeland Security, pp. vii–x.

14. James Jay Carafano, “Prospects for the Homeland Security Department: The 1947

Analogy,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, Backgrounder (September 12,
2002): 15.

15. Remarks prepared for delivery by Robert S. Mueller III, Director, Federal Bureau of

Investigation at a Press Availability on the FBI’s Reorganization Washington, DC (May 29,
2002), www.fbi.gov/pressrel/speeches/speech052902.htm; FBI Strategic Focus (May 29,
2002) www.fbi.gov/page2/52902.htm; U.S. Department of Justice, Report to the National
Commission on Terrorist Attack upon the United States: The FBI’s Counterterrorism Program
Since September 2001 (April 14, 2004), www.fbi.gov/publications/commission/9-11com-
missionrep.pdf.

16. U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs, “Fact Sheet: Bush to Create

Terrorist Threat Integration Center” (January 28, 2003), usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/ter-
ror/03012806.htm.

17. James Jay Carafano and Ha Nguyen, “Better Intelligence Sharing for Visa Issuance and

Monitoring: An Imperative for Homeland Security,” Heritage Backgrounder #1669 (October
27, 2003), www.heritage.org/Research/HomelandDefense/BG1699.cfm#pgfId-1078078.

18. The spending estimate is based on National Communications System, Report 99-62,

www.ncs.gov/n5_hp/Customer_Service/XAffairs/NewService/NCS9962.htm. For an
overview of Y2K lessons learned, see David Mussington, Concepts for Enhancing Critical
Infrastructure Protection: Relating Y2K to CIP Research and Development (Santa Monica, CA:
Rand, 2002), pp. 11–18.

19. Various state and local initiatives are listed on the National Governors Association, Center

for Best Practices Web site, www.nga.org/center.

20. National Conference of State Legislatures, “Protecting Democracy: America’s Legislatures

Respond,” www.ncsl.org/programs/press/responsebook2002. For an overview of state

PART 1 • HOW WE GOT HERE FROM THERE

Sauter ch01-03 2/16/05 4:21 PM Page 58

programs and initiatives, see Office of Homeland Security, State and Local Actions for
Homeland Security (July 2002); National Emergency Management Association, State
Organizational Structures for Homeland Security (2002), www.nemaweb.org/News/
NEMA_Homeland_Security_Report.pdf.

21. For example, an assessment of the requirements of major cities is provided in The United

States Conference of Mayors, “A National Action Plan for Safety and Security in
America’s Cities” (December 2001), www.usmayors.org/uscm/news/press_releases/doc-
uments/ActionPlan_121101.pdf.

22. The National Governors Association estimated that homeland security spending could top

$4 billion per year. The National Conference of Mayors estimates that in total the 200
largest cities will spend an additional $2.6 billion.

23. Written testimony of Raymond W. Kelly, Police Commissioner of the City of New York,

before the National Commission on Terrorist Attack upon the United States (May 18,
2004).

24. Bill Zalud, “Post-Sept. 11th, Security Re-evaluates; Expects Impact through 2002,” Security,

ttp://www.secmag.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP_Features_Item/0,5411,6
9674,00.html.

25. “Alternative Site Survey,” Disaster Recovery Journal (Summer 2002): 84–93.

CHAPTER 3 • THE BIRTH OF MODERN HOMELAND SECURITY

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